Thursday, April 7, 2011

Mommy's Model

I set Ellie down in the bed after the tub and just something about her and the monotone of the towel, pillow, walls and her hair made her eyes pop out at me. My time has been taken up lately by a million different things and I haven't had much time to photograph my own kids. The Grandparents are begging for new pictures to replace the outdated ones on the walls. I decided to have a mini session with Ellie. Maybe I can share a bit with you to help you photograph your own kids.

Here is the first image. Typical with her nose right in the centre of the frame. Starring directly at the camera. How can we change it up to make it a bit more interesting?

This one is bit off center and when the subject is looking out of the frame there should be room for them to look into open space. If you are using auto focus then sometimes when the subject is not directly in the center it will cause your picture to be out of focus because the camera will focus on what is in the middle (in this case the pillow) which is farther away than Ellie. So if you are able to you can move the auto focus to an off center point or use manual focus.

In this image I cropped it so that she is off center by moving her up in the picture. Your eyes are drawn up to her eyes.

Some of my favorite shots are when kids are not looking directly at the camera but are engaged in an activity.

Ellie started shaking her head back and forth. So fun. But even on 1000 ISO and a brightly lit room the image of her moving is blurry. Next time you are at the park try taking pictures of your kids moving like for example on the swing. If you stand in front of them and they are moving towards you the blur is different if you go to the side and they are swinging from side to side.

I just popped a bit of flash to freeze the motion. There is a large window to her right. A window right behind her and above and a window to her left a long ways a way. You can see just under her chin that there is a bit of a shadow created by the on camera flash. When I am at home I am not always 100% technical like I would be for a job. If I was I would never get any pictures of my own kids!

Again with flash. Freeze!

Without flash. Blurrier. Blurry isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it can enhance the mood of an image.

Whhhewww tired out from all the hair whipping.

Watch some more TV!

Would you like more tips like this? Do you have an image you love that you would like to share. Do you have a photo question? Feel free to send feedback and questions to corla_rokochy@hotmail.com

About Me

Corla is a mom of five amazing kids from baby to teen. Corla has ran a succesful photography studio for 14 years from her home and has now moved into a studio space. She is a freelance photographer and writer who has had work published in Our Canada, More Our Canada, Newspapers, Today's Parent and her son's playschool journal. She is known as the Pentamom or MomGyver. She is also writing this about herself and finds odd talking about herself in the third person. Every day is an adventure!